The Cancer Diagnosis

even the most normal of things can betray you-
sunlight; salt; the air between words; your body.
when you accept this, you will want to scream
but it seems strange to scream when everything
around you is bathed in peace – so you swallow it.
the day the x-ray lights up in the doctor’s office,
you barely hear the words coming out of his mouth.
later, you will find fragments in your ears ‘recovery /
survival / scar’ and you want to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
next to you, your mother is crying. when the doctor
leaves the room, you tell her not to look at you –
you don’t want to see what she sees reflected in her eyes.
the knowledge is too much to bear. you wonder how
you could have walked through the world without knowing
what was going on inside your own throat.
there was a time when you thought the worst
things could only happen to other people. this time has come
and gone and you are standing on the other side of it now,
holding your head in your hands.